a foot swift on the hills as morning

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/19713466.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/M
Fandom: Labyrinth (1986), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types,
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Shining -
Stephen King
Relationship: Jareth/Sarah Williams, Jareth & Sarah Williams
Character: Sarah Williams (Labyrinth), Jareth (Labyrinth), Original Female
Character(s), Thomas (Maze Runner), Newt (Maze Runner), Minho
(Maze Runner), Hoggle (Labyrinth), Sir Didymus, Ludo (Labyrinth),
Irene | Karen Williams, Toby Williams, Robert Williams (Labyrinth),
Morrigan, Daedalus
Additional Tags: Crossover, Multiple Crossovers, Running, BAMF Sarah Williams
(Labyrinth), Workplace Relationship, Mythology References, Magic,
Boss/Employee Relationship, Libraries, References to Ancient Greek
Religion & Lore, Celtic Mythology & Folklore
Collections: Shady Labyrinth Faves, Shady Crossover Faves
Stats: Published: 2019-07-07 Words: 9999

a foot swift on the hills as morning

by laiqualaurelote

Summary

“You’ve spent ten years running from me,” said Jareth. “Now, how would you like to run
for me?”

In which Sarah accidentally gets a job offer, acquires far too many interns and becomes a
professional labyrinth runner.

Notes

The technical distinction between labyrinths and mazes is that a labyrinth is unicursal (non-
branching) while a maze is multicursal (many branches). It's clear that the Labyrinth of the
Underground is multicursal, however, and for the purposes of this fic, I use "labyrinth" and
"maze" interchangeably.

The title is a line from the verse drama Atalanta In Calydon by A. C. Swinburne. In Greek
myth, Atalanta was a maiden famed for her speed as a runner.
See the end of the work for more notes

I know that hidden in the shadows there

Lurks another, whose task is to exhaust

The loneliness that braids and weaves this hell

To crave my blood, and to fatten on my death.

We seek each other. Oh, if only this

Were the last day of our antithesis!

– Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The Labyrinth’, translated by John Updike

The labyrinth below London Below stank. It was moist with centuries of buried misery, but
beneath that was the primordial stench of the old terrors of the city.

Sarah stood on a broken parapet overlooking the ruined street, throwing stones.

Some of the stones clattered in the street. Others landed in the brackish water that curdled where
the street gave way, sending up echoing splashes.

In the bowels of the labyrinth, she heard something stir.

Sarah kept throwing the stones with her right hand. In her left was one of the three crystals she had
entered the labyrinth with; it was glowing, giving her enough light to see by. This had been her
second wish. Her first had been that she should go unseen and unsensed by the Beast of London,
which even now she could hear approaching, gathering speed.

Sarah slung the ball of light into the air and sent it drifting down the street. It was a broad Roman
road, flanked on either side by the remains of buildings, Victorian and Jacobean and Restoration;
she had picked it for this quality. She took out the third and last crystal and said: “I wish I had the
sickle that the goblins made me in my hand now.”

Her fingers closed around the hilt of the weapon. The sickle was on the end of a chain and could be
swung; the goblins had forged it from silver to her specifications and she had practised with it for
weeks. Its edge was sharp enough to slice through any hide, even the hide of an ancient creature
thickened by centuries of enmity. It was too small to do much damage, but one cut was all she
needed.
Now came the Beast of London, churning up mud and paving stones beneath its hooves, its broad
back bristling with broken spears like a forest of rusted iron heaving and rippling through the
labyrinth. It came snorting and barrelling down the street towards the light.

Sarah began to spin the sickle on its chain in widening loops, picking up speed. She breathed in,
the stench of the Beast clogging her nostrils as it flashed past in a heaving mass of flesh. She
breathed out and let the sickle fly.

The sickle sliced cleanly through its hide. The Beast roared but did not slow, no more than it would
for the bite of a gadfly. But the force of it dragged Sarah off her feet and she tumbled off the
parapet, hitting the street with a sickening crunch.

She blacked out for ten precious seconds from the pain. When she came to, she knew her arm had
been dislocated at the shoulder.

Sarah grit her teeth and forced her eyes open. The Beast had run on ahead, still chasing the floating
light. The sickle was lying in the street just ahead of her. She began to drag herself towards it on
one arm and saw with immense relief that it was still wet with the blood of the Beast.

She drew her fingertip through the wet blood and daubed it on her eyes and tongue.

The labyrinth blinked into focus around her. Suddenly she knew it, knew all of it like the beating
pathways of her own heart.

One more thing left to sort out before she ran. She rucked up her shirt, tucked a wad of it between
her teeth to bite down on and braced herself. Then she flung herself shoulder first into the nearest
wall and felt the joint pop back into the socket with a stomach-turning burst of pain so horrible that
it was all she could do to keep from retching.

She gave herself half a minute to recover. Then she said under her breath, “Come on, feet,” and she
began to run.

The labyrinth below London Below was among the most treacherous of labyrinths, but the blood
of the Beast led her true. She ran without light and in full agony, but she ran its twists and turns as
if straight as an arrow flies. The labyrinth ended in a sheer cliff of granite, a pair of great double
doors before her; these she flung open. She burst gasping into the heart of it even as the world
swayed before her, and as her knees buckled, she flung out her good arm and cried: “I claim this
labyrinth in the name of the Goblin King!”

When she hit the ground, she was back in the throne room.

“Sarah,” she heard him say as if from a great distance, “Sarah, are you all right?”

“I demand a raise,” Sarah said, and passed out.

It had started with the running.

At first Sarah ran on weekends in the usual routes: Central Park, the High Line, along the Hudson.
Two miles became four, became six. It wasn’t enough. She began running at night, in all defiance
of common sense for a woman.

There was no room to run freely in New York City, which was crowded and claustrophobic in its
pathways. In a way, it reminded her of the Labyrinth. It had been ten years since she had thought of
the Labyrinth, and she tried not to start now.

“You’re nuts,” said Laurie, her roommate, whose dedication to fitness did not extend past yoga
class. “At that hour? Something could happen.”

“Maybe I’ll get so fast nobody’ll catch me,” retorted Sarah. “At least, that’s the idea.”

What was disturbing was the thought that the running was the only thing that made Manhattan
bearable. Sarah had once dreamed of moving to Manhattan. Now that she was here, she chafed at
its endless, tiny nastinesses, the ridiculous rents, the indignity of the subway on a summer
afternoon, her terrible job in public relations. She drafted publicity campaigns for clients that never
saw the light of day. She sent carefully crafted e-mails to media outlets and then called them to see
if they’d received them, a practice that everyone involved resented deeply. She spoke brightly and
earnestly about companies and people she knew deep down to be questionable.
Things came to a head the night she had to stay back late to rewrite copy for one of their major
clients, a fashion brand. Push the eco angle more, she’d been told. Sarah, who knew for a fact that
the company burned millions of dollars’ worth of unsold stock a year, seethed past 10pm at her
computer terminal, whereupon she said out loud through gritted teeth: “I wish there was more to
my life than this.”

Almost immediately she knew it had been a mistake. The air sharpened till it glittered. Sarah
caught her breath.

“Careless of you, sweet Sarah,” said the Goblin King. He was sitting a cubicle over in full,
gleaming armour, straddling the desk of Stuart from Marketing, his feathered cloak draped over
intrays and outtrays. Same cut-glass cheekbones, same ridiculous hair. “So many ways I could
play with a wish like that.”

Sarah’s throat was dry. “You have no power over me, Jareth.”

“No?” Jareth picked through Stuart’s stationery with curiosity. He selected a stapler and clicked a
spray of staples into the air. “You said your right words. And don’t say you didn’t mean them,
precious thing.” He gestured at the office, at the handful of her co-workers pulling overtime,
oblivious to his presence. “How could you not want more than this?”

Sarah sighed and folded her arms. “Tell me what you propose, Goblin King.”

“You didn’t seem to like it when I proposed, last I checked.” Jareth slid smoothly off the desk and
prowled over to her. He planted his hands on her desk, leaning over her. Sarah stared at those long,
slender fingers in their leather gloves. She had spent ten years trying not to think about them. That
she rarely succeeded, especially in her dreams, was something he did not need to know.

Jareth smirked at her as if he did indeed know. “No, sweet Sarah; this is a proposal of another ilk.
A business proposal.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow at him.

“You’ve spent ten years running from me,” he said. “Now, how would you like to run for me?”

*
Laurie came out of her room to Sarah standing in the kitchen with a cold lasagna opened in her
hand, staring into the microwave as if it was the Nietzschean abyss.

“Long day at work?” she ventured.

“Laurie,” said Sarah in a strange voice, “you work in HR. What would you do if someone from
your past offered to hire you?”

“Don’t take job offers from your ex,” said Laurie prosaically.

“Not an ex,” said Sarah slowly. “Not...per se.”

“Even worse then. Unresolved sexual tension? Bad workplace dynamic. Deeply unproductive. Do
not recommend.”

Sarah began to cry. Laurie, alarmed, took the lasagna away from her and rubbed her shaking
shoulders.

“I hate my job,” managed Sarah between sobs. “I hate it so much. Of course he’d know to use
that.”

“Oh, honey. Don’t agree to anything you aren’t a hundred per cent sure about.”

“Oh believe you me,” said Sarah with surprising vehemence, “I am not doing that again.”

In the end, Sarah drew up the hiring contract herself. She based it on templates Laurie had supplied,
though she refused to let Laurie review it. She puzzled over every clause and loophole.

It was clear that while Jareth was great at bargains, he was not too bothered about the nitty-gritty
of employment. Sarah named him a starting pay ten times what she was earning at her current job
and he waved her on, already bored.

He skimmed through the pages on health benefits, period of notice and leave days - stopping only
to raise an eyebrow at “The undersigned will have free access in and out of the Underground at any
time without prejudice or obligation”.

“You know that goes both ways,” he pointed out. “If you have access to my domain, I have the
same access to yours.”

Sarah considered this. Her domain was at present half of a shabby walk-up apartment in Midtown.
“For as long as we are both bound by the contract, no longer,” she said.

Jareth signed with a flourish in the space provided, a tangled curl of ink that could not be read.

“Now,” he said, grinning, “you are mine.”

Sarah folded her arms. “If you say so, boss.”

Jareth threw back his head and let out an uncanny peal of laughter.

He had her run the easy labyrinths first. There was the round labyrinth with the mysterious black,
red and white figures hanging around in it; they did not interfere, only watched her pass with
indifference and sometimes stood on their heads. There was the labyrinth of spiralling canals that
were traversed in boats like shells, powered by foot pedals from the back. There was the labyrinth
in the small, sad city where everywhere she went, men with the same crazed look in their eyes were
blocking off entrances and exits with rubble. There was a woman in their dreams with long black
hair, they said, who fled from them through the gaps in the city; they were plugging these so they
would not lose her the next time. They eyed Sarah with an unsettling hunger. She was glad to solve
that one.

“Are they all going to be so simple?” she remarked one day.

Jareth was sprawled lengthwise on his throne, tossing one of his crystals up and down. At her
words, he snatched it out of the air and swung round to face her. “Simple, is it?”

The sneer on his face reminded her of that moment when she had called his Labyrinth a “piece of
cake”, but she raised her chin anyway and said, “Yes. Simple.”

“Well now,” said Jareth. “Can’t have our Sarah being condescended to, can we?”

He flung the crystal at the wall behind her head. It opened up a vortex. “Run along then,” he said,
and there was an unpleasant edge to his tone.

Sarah rolled her eyes and stepped into the vortex.

She stepped out into fresh snow. The hedge walls of the maze rose dark and forbidding around her,
coated in white, lit by small floodlights tucked under the hedges.

There were footsteps in the snow.

Sarah shut her eyes and listened to the maze. To the creak of the hedges in the winter wind. To the
whisper of falling snow. To the heavy, crazed breathing of the man standing behind the hedge next
to her. “Danny,” he was mumbling, “Danny, I’m coming for you - ” and then he was screaming,
“I’m coming for you! I’m coming for you!”

Sarah’s eyes snapped open and she began to run.

“You dropped me in a maze with an axe murderer,” she hissed later.

“As mazes go it was an easy one,” Jareth responded. “A five-year-old could have solved it. And I
can only presume the axe murderer was not very fast, for here you are without a scratch.”

It’s not fair, Sarah wanted to say – but it was, wasn’t it, she had said the mazes were too simple and
he had given her a harder one, and they were only going to get harder from here on in because this
was now her job and fairness didn’t enter into it. So instead she put all her fear and rage into a
short, wordless scream and then she turned and left the throne room.

“You can stop any time, you know.”

Sarah jerked awake. Jareth was sitting at the foot of her bed. In his cape and feathers, he seemed
far too big for the room, which was probably the case, since all Sarah could afford in Midtown was
the size of a closet.

“Urgh.” She buried her face in the pillow. “Go away.”

“The compact allows for it,” Jareth went on, as if he had not heard. “You may...’give
notice’...whensoever you feel the work is too much for you.”

“It’s too early for this,” groused Sarah. “I wish you’d go make me a cup of coffee.”

Silence. Sarah raised her head. She was alone in her room.

There was a shriek outside. Sarah scrambled out of bed and dashed into the kitchen. Laurie was
staring, flabbergasted, as the Goblin King inspected their fridge.

“Who the fuck are you!” Laurie shouted. “What the fuck are you doing in my flat?”

“Fret not, Laurelei Chen,” said Jareth, ragged blond head still in the fridge. “You have naught to
fear from me, unless you cross me or mine.”

“Your real name is Laurelei?” said Sarah.

Laurie, who had turned a bright beet shade, seemed lost for words.
“That milk’s gone off,” Sarah told Jareth as he emerged with a bottle of milk in hand.

Jareth removed the cap, ran a fingertip around the rim and licked his finger. “Not any more, it
hasn’t.” He cast his gaze around the flat, taking in the cramped living room that was also the
kitchen, the droppings-encrusted fire escape, the mysterious mould in the corner of the ceiling. “I
offered you my kingdom and all the bounty of my domain,” he said reproachfully to Sarah, “and
you settle for this.”

“It’s shitty,” said Sarah, “but it’s mine.”

“No, it’s not,” said Jareth loftily, “you pay somebody else money to live in it. Don’t fool yourself,
my girl.” He poured some of the milk into a mug, blew on it and handed it to her. Then he walked
back into her room with the rest of the milk.

“That’s your boss?” mouthed Laurie.

The mug was filled with coffee - cream and half a spoon of sugar, the way Sarah always took it.
She stuck her head into the bedroom. Jareth had vanished. On the sill of the open window sat an
empty milk bottle.

“Yeah,” she said to Laurie. “That’s Jareth. Sorry about that.”

“I mean,” said Laurie. “Those tights.”

“I know.” Sarah took a sip of coffee. It was so good her eyes rolled back into her head and she
groaned involuntarily.

“I just - ” began Laurie. “Never mind.” She went back into her room.

“Sir Didymus?”
“Yes, milady?”

“Can you teach me how to use a sword?”

She settled into a routine. Mornings, she got up at seven, ate breakfast with Laurie in their cramped
kitchenette. Laurie took the subway to work; Sarah went through the mirror on the inside of her
wardrobe door.

She went running around the outskirts of the Labyrinth. She ran up and down the stairs in the
Escher room, because nothing tested one’s endurance like flights of stairs that went nowhere.

She sparred with Sir Didymus, who could be very exacting about her sword drills when he wanted
to, and practised marksmanship with Hoggle, who thought the whole thing was a terrible idea and
grumbled accordingly, especially when she refused to shoot the fairies. She made Ludo hurl rocks
at her so she could duck them. Ludo did not want to. “Then somebody else will do it and they’ll
really mean to kill me, and they’ll succeed because you didn’t help me get in the practice,” she
said sternly. Ludo wept at that, great tears rolling down his furry face and collecting on his tusks,
but he acquiesced.

She read weaponry manuals. Some of these, the library in the Castle had in abundance; for the
more modern weapons, she had to go to the New York Public Library and dig up old copies of
Guns & Ammo. In the Castle's armoury, she hefted spears and swords and maces and glaives as
their smiths grumbled and bustled around her, took apart firing mechanisms, peered into the
mouths of cannons.

She was in the orchard doing chin-ups from a tree branch - the trees knew her routine by now and
jostled to put out the best branches for her favour - when she felt Jareth watching her. She ignored
him and focussed on the workout, muscles screaming as she hauled herself up. When she reached
twenty, she dropped to the ground and only then did she turn to look at him.

Jareth was leaning against a tree, arms crossed, gaze raking over her. Sarah, conscious of her sweat-
stained tank top and dust-topped track shoes, made herself meet his eyes.

He looked - appreciative. As much as he had been when she’d been in a glittering white ball gown.
She picked up her water bottle to take a swig from; the movement made the muscles in her arms
flex involuntarily, and she felt his eyes move to them.

Sarah took her time with the water. Finally she wiped her mouth in an unladylike fashion - Irene
would have conniptions if she saw - and said, “What’s up?”

“Ready to run again?” Jareth inquired.

“Sure. I’ll run tomorrow.” And then, because she couldn’t resist: “How risky will it be?”

Jareth’s mouth crooked. “As much risk as your restless heart requires.”

This maze kept changing. Not imperceptibly, like the Labyrinth, but with horrible ground-
crunching force. The walls slid together and apart, reshuffling like a deck of cards. Sarah flung
herself through a gap that closed almost on her heel and sprinted down a narrowing passage. She
turned a corner and saw the spider.

It was huger than she was – part spider, part scorpion, part metal nightmare. It reared back on its
hind legs, gnashing, then ran up a wall and at her.

“I wish I had a sword,” said Sarah out loud, palmed a crystal from the pouch at her waist and threw
it into the air, visualising the sword as she did.

Now Jareth gave her three crystals for each labyrinth she ran. She could not wish to solve the
labyrinth or destroy it - either would forfeit the run, according to the unwritten but unshakeable
rules of labyrinths everywhere - but she could wish for a tool, a weapon, or a change in
circumstance. Now she caught the sword by its hilt as it came down, wheeled and sliced through
the creature’s foreleg as it reached for her.

The thing shrieked, unearthly and metallic. Sarah crouched and saw the leg, dismembered, was
steel and wiring beneath sickly, dripping goo. As its tail came darting at her, stinger dripping with
venom, she sliced that off too. Ducking beneath its clacking legs, she plunged the sword into its
snarling face and gutted it mouth to abdomen.
She was sawing into its core when she glanced up and saw two boys staring at her, carrying an
unconscious third between them.

“Hi,” said Sarah brightly. “Do you know your way around here?”

“This is incredible,” said Sarah, staring at the model.

“It’s based on what we know of the maze, those who’ve run it,” said Minho. Come morning, he
and Thomas, the other boy Sarah had met in the maze, had brought her back to a clearing they
called the Glade. There was a whole crowd of boys living there in ramshackle tents, some in their
late teens, some barely older than Toby, and they all froze as she walked in. Some dropped their
tools. Sarah was fairly sure she saw one set himself on fire.

Now they were having an argument about her outside, which Sarah, Minho and Thomas were
trying to ignore. “She killed a Griever! She broke the rules! We should send her back out.”

“No one’s sending anyone anywhere without a trial - ”

“And when they punish us? Take more boys? What then?”

“Minho saw her use magic!”

“Magic, Newt? Just listen to yourself.”

“Gally, we’re trapped in an ever-changing maze of monsters with no memories of how and why. I
think magic isn’t that far of a stretch.”

“Okay,” said Sarah over the racket, plonking the core she had extracted from the Griever on the
table, “I’m getting out of here. You’re welcome to come along, if you like.”
“Where to?” asked Thomas suspiciously. “Your kingdom?”

“The kingdom of the guy I work for.”

“Is it safe?”

“Depends on how you feel about bogs and sudden musical numbers.” Sarah pointed at a digit
blinking on the display of the core. “What’s that?”

“Hang on.” Minho was circling the maze model; now he took the core from her and held it over a
section. “The maze is divided into sections; they rotate, always in the same order. Last night, we
were in section seven. The Griever’s from this section. There’s a hole in this section I never could
work out how to get through, but there’s got to be a way the Grievers come in and out of the maze;
maybe this here is how.”

“Could you get us through the maze to this hole?” Sarah asked. “We need to do it soon.”

“I’ve run this maze for three years, lady. I can get you anywhere in it.” Minho withdrew the core.
“But I’m not going without Alby.”

Alby was the name of the third boy, once their leader, now unconscious in the medical hut.

Sarah took a deep breath and considered things. She had two crystals left. She might need both of
them to get out of here. But she also needed Minho, and Minho wouldn’t leave without his friend.
Sarah didn’t think she would either, in his situation.

She took the second crystal out of her pouch. “Let’s see what I can do about Alby.”

“I stole you all these children,” said Sarah. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

Jareth narrowed his eyes at the ragtag bunch of boys clutching spears in his throne room. They
were still covered in Griever goo - there had been a close fight at the end to cut through the
creatures and get to the hole, and Sarah had used her last wish on a grenade. Not all of the boys had
wanted to come - some, like Gally, had argued for staying behind in the Glade - but her display of
magic in healing Alby had persuaded many of them, and Alby, once conscious, had talked the rest
into following her into the maze.

“They’re a bit old for my taste,” concluded Jareth.

“You should have seen where I found them. They’d have wished themselves away if they’d known
how.”

“We seek refuge,” Alby spoke up. “We have no memories except for our time imprisoned in the
maze. We wish to join your kingdom and have your protection.”

Jareth sighed. “You,” he said, pointing his cane at Minho. “You can run?”

“Yes, sir,” ventured Minho. “Sire, I mean. Your Majesty. Sorry.”

“I suppose they can be trained up for something useful,” Jareth decided. “Do you all bend the knee
to my rule and swear to serve and obey me - ”

“Within reason and never to harm yourselves or others, as long as you have his protection,”
supplemented Sarah.

Jareth glared. “I won’t have you taking advantage,” Sarah told him.

“Within reason and never to harm yourselves or others, as long as you have my protection,”
amended Jareth. “For I am the height of generosity.”

The boys glanced nervously at each other. “I swear,” said Alby, and the others murmured assent
after him.

Jareth snapped his fingers at a goblin perched in a corniche by his head. “You, Grobble - ”
“Grundle, Your Majesty.”

“ - yes, that - find these boys quarters in the city. See they have what they need. They can set about
earning their keep on the morrow.”

“Someone will be along for them,” he added to Sarah as Grundle escorted the boys out.

“I suppose you’ll have to let whoever it is run the Labyrinth to get them back.”

“Of course,” said Jareth virtuously. “You know me. I’m always fair.”

Sarah snorted.

Someone did come for the boys. They attempted to bomb the Labyrinth from the air.

“Not very sporting,” remarked Jareth as the Labyrinth simply winked out of sight for the bombers.
“I declare the challenge forfeit.”

The goblins cackled and hooted. Jareth, pleased with himself, burst into song.

“But where is the music coming from?” whispered Thomas, wide-eyed.

“Just go with it,” Sarah whispered back. “You get used to it eventually.”

Part of Sarah’s training regime now involved climbing out of the oubliette. She had forbidden the
Helping Hands from helping her. “Oh, keep still, you lot! I’ve got to do this on my own.”

The Hands grumbled, but stopped grabbing at her. Muscles aching, she climbed on upwards until
she crawled, exhausted, into one of the Labyrinth’s courtyards and lay baking in the sun, trying to
catch her breath.

The boys were doing laps in the outer circuit of the Labyrinth; she heard the occasional yell as one
of them tumbled through a trapdoor. She trotted back to the Castle, the Labyrinth cleaving to her so
that it was but a ten-minute walk, and was halfway up the steps to the throne room, swigging from
her water bottle, when she heard voices raised.

“...and don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,” she heard a woman snap. “Of all the
underhanded ways to steal power - ”

“Nothing underhanded about it, Mor,” she heard Jareth reply. “She beat your labyrinth fair and
square.”

Sarah came to the top of the steps and saw the visitor. She was a tall woman of an extraordinary
wild beauty and an Irish brogue. As she turned to Sarah, her face shifted as if it was glitching - for
a split second she was blue-haired and beaked like a crow, then red-haired, her face shrunken like a
death’s-head. “So this is your little runner,” she sneered.

“Sarah,” said Jareth, sounding bored, “this is the Morrigan.”

The Morrigan looked Sarah up and down and stepped into her space, her face glitching furiously.
Sarah felt her nearness like a storm prickling her skin. She raised her chin and met the Morrigan’s
flaying glare.

They held each other’s gazes for a beat. Then the Morrigan stepped away.

“You’re an ignoble savage, Goblin King,” she spat at Jareth, “and you’ve not heard the end of
this.”

“Send your own champion,” said Jareth dismissively. “Have them run my labyrinth. But
remember, it grows stronger every day.”
The Morrigan turned on her heel in a flare of robes and strode from the throne room, vanishing
before she reached the door.

“This must be the first time I’ve seen you defy some other authority besides mine,” remarked
Jareth. “It’s wildly diverting. I should arrange for it to happen more often.”

“Which was her labyrinth, again?”

“Do you recall the dead maze with the dank walls?”

“Yes.” Sarah shuddered. “Covered in those awful, quivering growths.”

“Those were beads of the Morrigan’s sweat. The maze is her thumbprint.”

“Oh.” Sarah contemplated this. “Gross. So what is it exactly that you're doing with the labyrinths?”

“A labyrinth is a funny thing.” Jareth produced a crystal and began spinning it on a finger. “Most
see them as a way to keep people out - certainly I did, until you showed me different.”

“A labyrinth is a way in,” said Sarah, understanding dawning. “If you solve it right.”

“Take the Morrigan, for instance. When you claimed her maze in my name, you opened it to me. I
may pass freely through her kingdom and draw on its power. She may not raise her hand against
me.”

“I ran your labyrinth and won,” said Sarah. “Does that mean you cannot raise your hand against
me?”

“I would not raise my hand against you,” said Jareth. “But not for that reason.”

He had an odd look in his piercing, mismatched eyes. Sarah glanced away.
“I should go to check on how the boys are doing,” she said, her voice too loud for her own ears. “If
I don’t, Sir Didymus is likely to run them into the ground.”

Jareth watched her go, saying nothing.

“You look like you’ve been working out, Sarah,” remarked her stepmother when she made it back
home for Thanksgiving dinner.

“Yeah,” said Sarah. “A bit.”

“It’s a good look,” said Irene, passing her the potatoes. “You used to be so waif-like. No flesh on
those bones.”

“Don’t overdo it though, sweetheart,” put in her father, “men don’t like too much muscle on a girl.”

“I don’t think I’m much interested in a man who feels threatened by a woman who can bench press
her own body weight,” said Sarah calmly, and popped a potato into her mouth.

Her father stared at her. “You can bench press your own weight?” Toby exclaimed. “Cool! Can
you lift me with one arm?”

“Maybe,” said Sarah. “Want to try?”

“Let Sarah finish her dinner first, darling,” said Irene hastily as Toby whooped. “So how’s work
going?”

“It’s fine. Actually I switched roles a while back. It’s a much better fit for me.”

“What area is that in?” asked her father.

“Acquisitions,” said Sarah.

“Hm. It’s not a start-up, is it?” Her father was suspicious of start-ups.

“No, it’s a well-established firm. It’s just that they’re moving in a new direction, so they brought
me on.”

“That’s nice, dear. Big headcount?”

“We’re pretty manpower-lean,” said Sarah. “But I did get a whole bunch of interns recently.”

“Are you and Jareth together?” Minho wanted to know.

“Seriously, guys, I didn’t save you from the Glade so you could ask me intrusive questions.” Sarah
cocked a hand on a hip. “How’s your training going?”

“Pretty good,” said Minho. “Thomas cleared the Moving Maze the other day.” Parts of the other
labyrinths Sarah had run were beginning to manifest in the Underground, and after some initial
wariness, the boys had started to attempt the moving section that had come over from their
previous prison.

“That’s great, Thomas.”

“Thanks,” said Thomas. “So are you and Jareth together?”

“No,” said Sarah, and did not add, not for lack of Jareth trying. “And I hope you don’t go around
asking him this sort of thing.”

“We don’t need to,” said Newt. “He’s bloody into you. Don’t that make you like, Queen or
something?”

Sarah felt a headache coming on. Nowhere in her job description had there been a mention of
raising a bunch of mind-wiped, traumatised teenage boys with her employer, whom they believed
her to be in a relationship with. What did they even know about relationships, anyway? Had
anyone given them the sex talk? Perhaps she could foist that one off on Jareth. Probably to
disastrous effect.

“No more of that,” she said to their grinning faces. “Or I’ll set Sir Didymus on you for extra
drills.” And, ignoring their groans, “Now I’ve brought you new books to read. I hope you’ve
finished the last batch.”

What was it about mazes and giant spiders anyway, Sarah thought in annoyance as the latest
specimen bore down on her with its pincers clacking, the size of a carthorse. She tossed a crystal at
it and shouted: “I wish this spider would freeze at once!”

The spider toppled over in paralysis. Sarah edged past it and broke into a run as the centre of the
maze came into sight.

So far she had walked through a golden mist that turned things upside down and encountered what
looked like a giant cross between a scorpion and a crab that shot sparks out of one end, on which
she’d used her first crystal. Just another day on the job, then.

In the centre of the maze was a pedestal, and on it sat a shining cup. “I claim this labyrinth in th - ”
began Sarah, taking hold of it, and her voice died as something unpleasant yanked under her navel
and she fell through space into a dark graveyard.

Tombstones loomed around her, many broken and crumbling on their side. There was a man
standing before her, a short, little man - and to his side, something, someone else that she had no
name for. Her mouth went dry.

“Hang on,” said the man, “that’s not the right - ”

And a smooth, cold voice said: “Kill the spare.”

The man pointed a stick at her. “Avada kedavra.”

Sarah, without even time to think, was already throwing her last crystal at him. As it met the jet of
green light, as the ensuing explosion flooded the graveyard in a blinding wave of light, as she
dropped to the ground and her hand groped for the cup -

- I wish to live, I wish to live, I wish to live -

“ - in the name of the Goblin King,” said her lips, as she hurtled again through the dark.

When she collapsed in the throne room, she was sobbing for reasons she could not find words for.

Jareth was angrier than she had ever seen him. “That labyrinth was rigged,” he hissed. “It should
not have done that. It’s not - ”

“ - not fair?” Sarah cut him off. She had now reached the stage where she was laugh-crying,
hysterical, at the same time. “That’s my line, you know.”

Jareth took her face between his long fingers. “That was a killing curse, Sarah,” he said sombrely.
“You could have died.”

“Oh,” said Sarah. “Oh.” Her body had known this, even if her mind hadn’t caught up till now; that
must be why it was behaving in such a bizarre fashion. There were plenty of times she could have
died in the last dozen labyrinths, the rational part of her mind reasoned, but somehow the thought
was only occurring to her now. Her mind was full of green light. Avada kedavra. She hiccoughed
on a sob.

“Take me home, Jareth,” she whispered. “Please.”

In her tiny room in the noisy Manhattan night, she curled up wordlessly on top of the bedclothes.
Jareth watched her in silence, and then he sat down at the foot of her bed and began to take her
boots off. Neither of them remarked on how odd that was. When he was done, he rose again.
“I do not regret most of the wishes I grant,” he said, gazing down at her, “but I think I am
beginning to regret this one.”

Sarah blinked back at him, sleep lapping at her, and in between blinks he was gone.

He said nothing when she reported for work the next day, and she said nothing. A month later, she
ran the labyrinth of London Below.

She woke to the darkness of her bedroom and the dull but insistent throbbing of her shoulder.

Jareth was sitting by her bed in a chair he had definitely conjured, since she didn’t have chairs in
her bedroom. His right hand was working a sort of cat’s cradle with a gleaming thread, which gave
off a light that limned his jawline in silver. In his left, he was reading a sheaf of papers.

“Is that my contract?” asked Sarah blearily. Her system was still weighed down with the drugs that
the goblin physicians had pumped her full of.

“Yes,” said Jareth shortly.

Sarah squinted at the page he was reading. Termination clause. “Are you trying to fire me?”

“Yes,” repeated Jareth, adding: “Though I have yet to work out how.”

Sarah shut her eyes in exhausted triumph. “You can’t fire me without valid grounds. Like failure to
deliver. And I’ve delivered over and over. I delivered you London Below.”

“You could have broken more than your arm,” Jareth shot back. “That was not in the plan.”

“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

“Be as that may.” Jareth made the contract vanish into thin air and turned to stare grimly at her. “It
seems the only way to keep you by my side is to continue providing you with opportunities to
exercise your deathwish.”

“It’s not - ugh. I don’t want to die. It’s just - have you ever found something you are good at? More
than anything else in the world?”

“Stealing children, dark magic, accessorising,” intoned Jareth. “I’m good at lots of things.”

“Well, I’m good at labyrinths,” said Sarah. “It’s rare, in my world, to both find something you’re
good at and be able to make a living out of it. Don’t try to take that away from me.”

Jareth sighed and handed her the cat’s cradle, which by now had expanded into a kind of broad
ribbon. “Slap that on.” He jerked his chin at her shoulder. “And don’t even think of getting out of
bed for a week.” He stuck his head out and yelled into the darkened flat: “See that she stays in bed,
Laurelei!”

“It’s three a.m., what the fuck?” Laurie yelled back.

Sarah fumbled the gleaming ribbon onto her shoulder; it curled around it like a bandage and sank
into her skin. The dull throbbing was replaced by a cooling sensation that numbed the whole joint.

Jareth returned to her bedside and stood looking down at her critically. “I will have you know,
Sarah,” he said gravely, “that I prize you more than I prize all the labyrinths of the world.”

Sarah fought back a giggle. It must be the drugs. “That’s nice. Do I get that raise, then?”

“You can have all the riches of the Underground, dear heart, if you will stop falling off things,”
said Jareth wearily, and then in a flare of his cloak, he was gone.

Magic healing or no, Sarah was benched for a month. She passed the time in interminable rounds
of Scrabble with Didymus, going jogging whenever Jareth wasn’t paying attention and the
Labyrinth’s first-ever staff retreat.

“Oh my god,” she exclaimed, emerging from a hedge maze into the bustle of an amusement park.
“Is this Disneyland? When did we add Disneyland?”

“I may have had Minho run the labyrinth here while you were on sick leave,” admitted Jareth.

“It was shucking easy,” put in Minho, wandering by with a soft-serve in hand. “Did it in less than
ten.”

“Because it’s for babies, you slinthead,” Gally called, and ducked as Minho lunged for him.

“Behave, you lot,” Sarah shouted after them. “No fighting, no jumping off the rides and be back
here by sundown.”

“For a girl who wished away her brother rather than mind him, you’ve got rather good with
children,” remarked Jareth.

“Oh shut up,” said Sarah without heat. He offered her his arm; she took it with her good hand, the
one not in the sling, and they strolled through the park after their fifty teenagers running amok.

“I suppose it’s about time they saw the world outside of mazes,” she mused. “Even if Disneyland is
hardly representative.”

“It has its relevant aspects.” Jareth was watching a couple of girls giggle and whisper in French as
they watched Thomas and Chuck debate, with furrowed concentration, the merits of Hyperspace
Mountain versus Big Thunder Mountain Road. Thomas glimpsed the girls looking and blushed
horribly.

“We’re introducing them to girls now? Really?”

“They’re of an age for it,” said Jareth remorselessly. “It’s either that or have them moon about the
Labyrinth in love with you. Or each other.” Newt was watching Thomas begin a fumbling
conversation with the girls, a sour look on his face.
“Oh dear,” said Sarah.

“Adolescence,” said Jareth. “Delightful.”

Things settled into a routine once she was back in the field. She trained, ran more labyrinths,
debriefed Jareth afterwards. She called these “after-action reports”, but really they meant lounging
around in his quarters, drinking whatever strange vintage he had at hand and recounting her latest
conquest while he listened with lidded gaze as the fire in the grate burned low.

“ - and then I realised the whole city was the labyrinth, so I figured it out from there. I rather liked
this one, you know. It had a real atmosphere to it. Even though it was dark all the time and I
couldn’t let myself sleep and there were all these psychopathic aliens in trenchcoats.”

“They were aliens, then? That explains a lot.”

“Oh, yeah, aliens. They were wearing the bodies of dead people.”

“Cunning.”

“Still, it was pretty cool. I pretended to be a singer in a nightclub at one point.”

“You’ll sing for the aliens, but not for me?”

She laughed. “Maybe someday.”

Sarah put the book back on the shelf, and then she said, “Goodbye,” under her breath, turned and
walked out of the library.
The shelves parted for her and she came out into the Escher room. Navigating the Escher room was
always less about directions and more about a state of mind, so she merely told it she wanted to see
Jareth, went down a couple of flights and turned into the corridor leading to the throne room. She
could hear Jareth in discussion with somebody - Newt, it turned out.

“ - and we were just thinking it’s a pretty inefficient way to water the gardens,” Newt was saying.
“But if we were to rejig the irrigation systems like so, Zart thinks that we could do twice the work
with half the water.”

“You are aware,” came Jareth’s voice, “that the wellspring is infinite and so it hardly matters how
much water you use.”

“Yeah, but it’s the principle of the thing,” Newt went on. “Just because you think something is
going to last forever doesn’t mean you should waste it.”

“Hm. Then see it done, Newton.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty. Oh, and if there’s a decree or something you could put out to let the
gardeners know you’ve approved this? Only they keep messing with our work, and one of them
even shoots at us with his air-gun-thing.”

“That creature no longer listens to me, only to Sarah. You can take it up with her - if she ever
comes back.”

There was a bitterness to Jareth’s tone that she’d rarely heard. Sarah stepped into the throne room.
“You needn’t worry about Hoggle, Newt, I’ll have a word with him.”

Jareth, restlessly moving crystals from hand to hand, stilled on his throne. “Sarah!” exclaimed
Newt. “How did the - ” He paused and glanced cautiously at Jareth.

“Leave us,” said Jareth.

Newt gathered up his diagrams and slipped out of the room.

Sarah paused to take stock. Jareth was livid; it was obvious when he was, his rage made the air
around him freeze and sting. It had been a long time, though, since she had been the subject of such
rage. She edged forward carefully. “Did - did something happen while I was away?”

Jareth laughed, a hollow, mocking sound. “While you were away, Sarah?”

“Look, I’m sorry, but that labyrinth cannot be solved.”

“After all that time - ” began Jareth, then caught himself. “No, it doesn’t matter.”

“Wait,” said Sarah. “How long did I take?”

Jareth turned slowly to look at her. “You didn’t know.”

“Time is funny in the library.” Sarah stepped closer to the throne. “Jareth, how long did I take?”

“A month,” he said heavily. “You were in the labyrinth for a month.”

“Oh.”

It hadn’t felt like a month. The library, in the early days, had felt like madness, as she wandered
through its hexagonal rooms and took book after book of gibberish off its shelves. Eventually it fell
not into a pattern but into a rhythm. There were always the bare necessities for survival in every
room. Sometimes she met others in the library - some burnt the books in despair of ever finding
anything of sense, while others told her they were searching for a messianic figure with the index
to everything printed in the library. She moved from room to room, ate, drank and slept when she
needed to, read book after book after book. And then one day, she decided to leave.

“You missed me,” she said, realisation dawning.

In three strides Jareth was off the throne and in front of her; she thought he might seize her, but
instead he stilled and raised her chin with the tip of a finger. “Do not belittle me, Sarah.”
Sarah caught his wrist and his eyes flashed. “Don’t be so swift to anger, Goblin King,” she said.
“Come and see.”

They had never gone together to see any of the other labyrinths before, but now he let her lead him
out of the throne room and into the infinite library.

“I thought you said you couldn’t solve this one,” said Jareth as they wandered through the
hexagonal rooms.

Sarah pressed her finger to her lips. “Shh. It’s a library.”

Jareth looked remarkably unchastened.

“Nobody can solve it,” she went on quietly. “It’s infinite.” She removed something from her pocket
- it was like one of his crystals, except with endless strings of characters scrolling over its surface.
“But that doesn’t mean you can’t get around it.”

She lifted the sphere to her lips and spoke: “Title equals open inverted commas the labyrinth closed
inverted commas and open inverted commas through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered
comma I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the goblin city to take back the child you
have stolen closed inverted commas search.”

The room shivered around them, dissolved and re-formed.

“So I had three crystals,” went on Sarah by way of explanation. “The first I used to get an
algorithm - do you have those? Dead useful - for searching through infinite amounts of data. The
second spell is still a bit iffy: it scans for redundancy based on my own memory of the English
corpus, what should work and what shouldn’t, though because it’s just my memory at the moment,
it’s rather prone to error. The third is a teleportation charm. It takes the user to the location of the
most relevant result and - ” here she paused to scan the shelves, ran her finger down a row of spines
and yanked out one. It was the red leatherbound edition of The Labyrinth. “Ta-da.”

Jareth took it from her, opened it and read in silence. After a while he turned it face-up to her and
said: “Half of it is empty.”
She laughed. “That’d be the second spell. I did say it was iffy.”

“Sarah, precious one,” said Jareth, almost as if in wonderment, “did you really spend a month
locked away in a library so infinite as to be meaningless, just so you could build a search engine
that has about as much chance of working as my subjects learning to fly?”

“Yep. That’s what you pay me for.”

“That is not - ” began Jareth, and trailed off as she took the book from him and their fingers
brushed.

He took a step forward, and then another, until she had her back pressed against the shelves.

“Why did you bring me here, Sarah?”

“I don’t know.” Her ribs felt inexplicably like something was about to burst through them. “I like
libraries, I guess.”

“So do I,” he said, and leaned in.

Jareth kissed with tongue and teeth, and her whole body thrilled to it. The book dropped from her
suddenly nerveless fingers, landing with a soft thump on the carpeted floor. Her hand, freed,
tangled on its own instincts in his shock of hair. His slid along her thigh and hitched it up against
his hip, pressing her further back into the shelves. For ten years she had imagined something like
this, and yet nothing could have prepared her for this moment.

His fingers skimmed her ribs and crept below the waistband of her jeans. She laid a hand flat
against his abdomen and he stilled, but she did not push him away and he slipped a finger into her
and she arched against the spines of the books.

She was making all kinds of sounds she didn’t think she could make. Jareth placed his free hand on
her mouth, saying in mock horror, “This is a library, Sarah,” and in response she set her teeth in his
glove and he groaned.
Her spine felt like it was melting at the base. He was singing a litany of her name in her ear. “Oh,
Sarah Williams, I will take you apart,” he crooned, and she came trembling, back pressed against
the shelves of an infinite library with the Goblin King knuckle-deep in her.

They didn’t get out of bed for days.

Jareth seemed endlessly fascinated with the changes she had wrought in her body over the past
year. He traced the muscles of her arms, kissed the hard planes of her stomach, ran his hands along
the leanness of her legs before hooking them over his shoulders to drive deeper into her. Sarah
discovered she liked hair-pulling. Jareth had plenty of hair.

He fucked her on her back as she braced herself against the headboard, and then she flipped him
over - he seemed to delight in that, the strength of her thighs - and rode him with his wrists pinned
above his head in one hand. In between they ate the food that magically appeared on the bedside
table - she could not remember any of it, it could have been pizza for all she knew - and then
fucked some more. The room changed as they did, sometimes stretching upwards so her cries
echoed around the rafters, sometimes filling with mirrors. Sarah almost did not recognise herself in
these, her hair a wild tangle and something wilder in her eyes, a king on his knees between her legs,
her hands fisted in his ash blond hair.

Somewhere on the third day, they were taking a break, Sarah testing the myriad sorenesses of her
body and Jareth stretched languorously out next to her, toying with one of her hands. “Marry me,”
he said suddenly.

Sarah sat up and stared at him. “Oh, Jareth, not this again.”

“I do not ask this lightly, Sarah. Certainly I do not make such offers to every brash stripling of a girl
to run my labyrinth. I have never met anyone like you and you will never meet anyone like me. We
understand one another perfectly. It is utterly sensible.”

“Oh god.” Sarah made to slide out of bed. “This was a bad idea after all.”

Jareth rose and stood silhouetted, magnificent, against the light from the window. “I will not keep
lowering myself to ask this, Sarah. I will not beg.”
“And I will not be bound,” she returned hotly. “If you understand me perfectly, you must know
that.”

She seized a robe from the floor and stalked out, throwing it around her shoulders. He watched her
go with a cold fury in his eyes.

She walked and walked until she realised she was no longer in the castle but in one of the
labyrinths, and not one she had ever run. Dark corridors, flickering torches on reddish granite
walls. A rank animal stench.

On the ground was a ball of thread.

She picked up the ball and knotted one end to a bracket on the wall. Then she began to walk.

The corridor seemed straight at first, but she soon realised that it was curving, just slightly enough
to fool the eye. The animal stench grew stronger; soon, she could hear the wheeze and groan of
something huge in restless dreams. She wished for a sword, a crystal, even something else to wear
besides a thin robe that, come to think of it, wasn’t even hers.

“You don’t want to go that way.”

A man had appeared out of nowhere. He’d come, it seemed, out of the wall. He was short and dark
and holding a torch.

“It is fortunate that you came while he was sleeping,” he said, gesturing behind him to where the
walls of the labyrinth shook with the snoring of the creature. “It’ll be some time before he awakens
and craves manflesh.”

“The Minotaur,” said Sarah, with dawning realisation, and then - “You’re Daedalus.”

“And you are Sarah Williams,” he said. “Well met.”

He tapped a certain pattern on the wall next to them, and it slid open noiselessly to reveal a slim
passage, which he went through. Sarah put down the ball of thread and followed him.
They emerged in another corridor - or perhaps it was the same, just curved in on itself. “I’ve never
run this labyrinth before,” said Sarah. “How did I come here? And how do you know me?”

“You didn’t run it,” Daedalus said. “But Jareth did, a long time ago. Barely made it too. He was
always better at keeping labyrinths than running them, that one. Who do you think built his
labyrinth for him?”

He chuckled at Sarah’s expression. “He didn’t steal me, if that’s what you’re wondering. Nor my
child.” His face darkened. “No, I lost my son all on my own.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sarah. “Where - ” she corrected herself, “no, when am I?”

“Good,” said Daedalus. “Think, my dear.”

“This isn’t the real labyrinth, is it?” Sarah ran a finger along the wall. No dust. “This is a dream.
His dream?”

“Hm. I can see why he likes you.” Daedalus smiled. “I was wondering when you’d wander in. It
was bound to happen sooner or later, the way he leaves the dreams lying around. You’d think he
wanted somebody to stumble over them.”

Sarah leaned against the wall and let out an exasperated breath. “When it comes to working out
what he wants - god, I’d have better luck with a labyrinth.”

“People think a good labyrinth is all about confusion,” said Daedalus conversationally. “There’s
more to it than that. It’s about antithesis. Left and right. Up and down. Maiden and monster.
Runner and keeper.”

“Sounds reductive.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? And yet the best labyrinths don’t just run on antithesis, they
transmute it.”
“I don’t want to keep running forever,” said Sarah. “But I can’t begin to imagine the cost to me if I
stopped.”

Daedalus looked at her kindly. “You people are always fixated on solutions. But the joy of a
labyrinth, the real joy - is in the running.”

The sun was setting when she returned to the castle. He was sitting in the window of the topmost
turret, clad in white and gold, watching the light sink below the horizon. He sensed her approach -
she could see it in the tension of his shoulders - but did not turn, not until she said: “Jareth.”

She was holding out her contract. He watched silently as she ripped it in two, then two again, on
and on until it fell from her fingers in shreds.

“I’m done with these compacts between us,” she said. “Let me go.”

“No,” he said. It was almost broken, the way he said it. “Don’t make me do that again, Sarah.”

She went to him, took the angles of his face between her hands, kissed him full and slow.

“Let me go,” she said against his lips. “And maybe then I’ll decide to stay.”

The mirrors showed different worlds. An ancient ruin. The grounds of a castle. A dark city.

“Or they would if we could agree on where to hang them,” said Sarah irritably.

Jareth gestured with his riding crop for two of the goblins carrying the mirrors to swap places. The
rest shuffled and groaned, wobbling somewhat dangerously. “I prefer them in the order of your
conquest, my love.”

“Yes, but then it’ll take forever to get to the newest ones.”
“Forever isn’t long at all,” said Jareth with the blitheness only a person who bends time can
achieve.

“I think we should organise them by frequency of use. The Scorch shouldn’t be so close to the
front, for instance - I don’t see us visiting often.”

“I fancy the Scorch for a new place of banishment. The Bog is getting tedious. Nobody quite takes
it seriously any more.”

Sarah sighed and mentally filed “banishment” under Conversations To Have Another Time. “How
about alphabetical order? Or basically any way to sort them so we can find them easily?”

“You and I can find any labyrinth we want, Sarah.”

“We could,” said Sarah hotly, “when we didn’t have this many. Now it’s just confusing.”

Time was she could enrage Jareth with her stubbornness, but these days it mostly just amused him.
“You used to do so well with confusion, precious thing.”

He had that glint in his eye that promised things that should not be done in front of other people,
not that he cared very much about that. “Take five,” Sarah told the goblins hastily, before Jareth
got carried away.

“Right you are, milady.”

“Thankee, milady.”

Chuck ran in amid the departing goblins, slightly out of breath. “It’s time, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, of course.” Sarah fielded Jareth by the elbow and dragged him after Chuck.
The other boys were in the throne room, gathered around a visibly nervous Thomas. “Remember to
pace yourself,” Newt was saying. “Oh, and don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

“Of course you’re not, you crazy shank.”

“First labyrinth, Thomas,” said Sarah briskly as she approached. “Feel ready?”

“Er,” said Thomas. “As I’ll ever be, I guess.”

“Remember - the tombs are occupied by the high priestesses, and you have to avoid the high
priestesses.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then sway them to your cause,” said Jareth dryly. “Or hasn’t Sarah covered that with you lot?
She’s terribly good at suborning people.”

Sarah batted at him absent-mindedly. Jareth smirked, counted out three crystals and handed them to
Thomas. “Use them wisely. Neither solve nor destroy. Say your right words.”

Thomas nodded tightly and tucked them into his pouch.

Jareth gestured to her. “Why don’t you do the honours, Sarah?”

She wasn’t queen, not by a long shot, and not if she had anything to say about it. She had not said
the right words and he no longer asked her for them. But the labyrinths answered to her. Not as to a
queen, but as to a champion.

She took the crystal from him and flung it through the air, felt something catch and open in the
fabric of the world as the vortex opened up in the throne room.
 “Go forth,” she said. “Run us a labyrinth.”

End Notes

The labyrinths in this story, in order of appearance:

- the labyrinth of London Below from Neverwhere, a novel by Neil Gaiman

- Labyrinth, a painting by Leonora Carrington
- Tránsito en Espiral, a painting by Remedios Varo
- the city of Zobeide, from Invisible Cities, a novel by Italo Calvino
- the Overlook Hotel's maze from the film The Shining
- the maze from the series The Maze Runner
- the Morrigan's thumbprint from The Hounds Of The Morrigan, a novel by Pat O'Shea
- the Triwizard Tournament maze from Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, a novel by J.
K. Rowling
- Alice's Curious Labyrinth in Paris Disneyland
- the city in the film Dark City, which stars Jennifer Connelly as a torch singer
- the library in Jorge Luis Borges's short story The Library Of Babel (while Sarah does not
solve this one, Jonathan Basile has created a virtual version of the library here)
- the labyrinth of Crete created by Daedalus to trap the Minotaur in Greek myth
- the tombs in The Tombs Of Atuan, a novel from Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series

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